Electronic communications require address information to properly direct a communication from a sender to a recipient via an electronic communications network. Such a network typically processes a literal address (such as, but not necessarily, an email address) to resolve the intended destination of the communication. The electronic communication application of the communication's sender can typically accept alternative forms of address information, for example as either a literal email address or as a person's name, the name being associated, by the application, with a corresponding literal email address. Hereinafter, “entering an address” means entering any form of information that the application can resolve to address information of the type that can be processed by the electronic communications network used to deliver the communication.
A sender of an electronic communication may have a large number of potential recipients from which to choose several recipients for that particular communication. It is commonplace for address information to be stored in order to be presented to the sender while the sender is choosing recipients for an electronic communication. Address information is typically stored in persistent address information lists, which may include address entries stored in contact lists (such as personal address books and global address lists, for example). Additionally, a transient address list (such as an auto-complete list, for example) can be generated, on the fly, as a relatively small list whose entries are taken from one or more persistent address information lists.
Electronic communications that can be sent to multiple recipients include email messages, Short Message Service (SMS) messages, Multimedia Message Service (MMS) messages, Instant Messaging (IM) messages, calendar invitation messages and conference telephone call messages, for example. Electronic communications may be sent from computing devices, whether wired or wireless, using communication software, as is well known in the art.
A common technique for enabling a user to specify an address in a recipient field of an electronic communication is to provide an auto-complete list, typically as a drop-down or pop-up menu of options, each option being a candidate address that the user may or may not desire to use as a recipient address. An auto-complete list behaves such that as the user inputs a portion of a recipient address, one or more persistent address information lists are searched to identify candidate addresses corresponding to the portion of the recipient address input thus far. Such an address information list can be a global address list (comprising, for example, all members of an organization, such as a corporation) or a list of addresses to which the particular user of the electronic communication application has previously (or recently) sent email; the latter type of list is more practical than a global address list if the organization has a multitude of members. Any candidate addresses, found in the one or more persistent address information lists, that correspond to the input portion of the recipient address are included in the auto-complete list. The correspondence need not be a perfect match between respective initial substrings of the currently input portion of the recipient address and of an address in a persistent address information list. For example, typing “Michael” can result in an auto-complete list being populated with options that have “Michael” as a first name, as a last name, or as a substring within the literal email address. The auto-address list enhances the productivity of the user by allowing the user to select one of the candidate addresses on the list, without having to type it out in its entirety, thereby speeding the input of a desired recipient address.
To further enhance the productivity of the user, when address information lists are used to generate an auto-complete list, the candidate addresses in the auto-complete list are typically listed in a particular order designed to allow the user to efficiently locate the desired address from amongst the candidate addresses. One well known method of ordering is alphabetical ordering. Another well known method of ordering is according to how recently the candidate addresses were input by the particular user of the of the electronic communication application. In this method, a Most-Recently Used (MRU) address list is created by displaying at the beginning (conventionally, the top) of the list the most-recently used matching address found in the persistent address information list(s), followed by less-recently used addresses in decreasing order of last use. Yet another well known method of ordering is according to how frequently the candidate addresses were used (typically during a predetermined time span prior to the present) by the particular user of the electronic communication application. In this method, a Most-Frequently Used (MFU) address list is created by displaying at the beginning (conventionally, the top) of the list the most-frequently used matching address found in the persistent address information list(s), followed by less recently used addresses in decreasing frequency of last use. MRU and MFU lists are typically generated by searching only candidate addresses previously (or recently) input by the user.
Known methods for providing an auto-complete list are typically only based on a current recipient address being entered. This can interfere with the efficient use of the list. Therefore, there is a need for an improved system and method for entering addresses.